finishes by becoming a devouring lion."

"Alas," he said, "how many, without meaning it, have been thus devoured,
beginning perhaps with this pious individual."

His sermon took great effect. An old woman wept, and several members of the
congregation appeared to sigh and think that it was a long time since they
had been devoured thus.

He had an inclination to laugh, as he came down from the pulpit, at the
words which he had just uttered on purity of heart, and he wondered that he
had been able to bring so much conviction and warmth to bear upon a subject
to which he was henceforth completely a stranger.

His own scepticism terrified him, and he saw that he had taken a long step
into evil Nevertheless he did concern himself at that, and from his place
near the pulpit he turned his impassioned gaze with more assurance on the
group of young girls.

Passion is a brutal level which equalizes us all. There remained in him
nothing more of the priest, there only remained the man full of desires,
and he flung his desires in riot upon that gyneceum which he thought
belonged to him.

In certain village churches, all the young girls are placed apart, near the
choir, sometimes even in the choir itself, under the eyes of the priest, as
if they wished to leave the most convenient choice to that never satiated
Priapus.

The handsome Curé of Althausen made his choice therefore at his ease and